The Supreme Court in the US has thrown out a case on whether or not Donald Trump, the former president, could block people from seeing content published on his official twitter account.
The conclusion to the case was that the end of Trump’s term as president made the case of whether or not he should be permitted to restrict visibility of his tweets moot.
The second circuit had previously stated that, because the official account of the President amounted to a kind of public forum concerning official matters of public interest, restricting the public’s access as a form of retaliation could be a violation of the 1st Amendment.
The day before the inauguration of current President Joe Biden, the US Justice Department requested that the Supreme Court dismiss the case as moot, arguing that Trump was within his rights as an individual Twitter user to block whomever he chose as a personal choice. The request effectively asked the Supreme Court to view the account as that of a personal one, as opposed to a public one.
Trump’s Twitter account has been permanently banned following the events of 6 January 2021, in which a violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol building in a failed attempt to stop Congress from ratifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with the court’s decision to make the case moot. However, he did express concern that applying old and often outdated legal viewpoints to modern and ever changing mediums could pose future issues and deserved further consideration.
Quote